Ad Campaigns
LAVA sparks off behaviour change campaign with #SendItBack against fake forwards
MUMBAI: One of India’s largest mobile handset brands, Lava International, today announced the launch of its Republic Day campaign- #SendItBack. The hard-hitting campaign video highlights the ongoing menace of fake forwarded messages that create panic and fuel acts of violence. It urges all mobile phone users in the country to pause think and send the ‘Back’ emoji to verify the authenticity of a forwarded message before sharing it with the others.
The campaign is aimed at prompting a behaviour change in people by urging them to use social media more judicially. Conceptualised and executed by 82.5 Communications, the campaign has been rolled out across various digital platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. The #SendItBack initiative encapsulates the core emotion of the brand, i.e, #ProudlyIndian.
Speaking about this special initiative, LAVA marketing and S&D strategy head Mugdh Rajit said, “The menace of fake news is growing by leaps and bounds. The fact that India has the world’s second-largest number of mobile phone users makes it very important for us to curb the fake rumours from spreading. LAVA is a Proudly Indian brand and we believe that it is our responsibility to contribute to society. With #SendItBack initiative we intend to spark-off a movement against fake forwards so that social media does not become a tool for the perpetrators of the violence. We envision this moment to go beyond the boundaries of the brand, wherein the audience is fighting this social issue in unison.”
82.5 Communications chairman and CCO Sumanto Chattopadhyay added, “India is at the heart of the 82.5 DNA – so we're grateful to LAVA for the opportunity to create communication that benefits the nation."
Commenting about the launch, 82.5 Communications president north Chandana Agarwal said, “Lava has been running the Proudly Indian Campaign for a year and a half and it always picks up messages that are relevant and makes one rethink patriotism. We are very excited about the message this year, with a handset in every hand, it is the responsibility of every Indian to fight fake news. This campaign is an important step towards making people aware of this duty.”
82.5 Communications executive creative director and creative head Mayur Varma added, “It’s so simple to forward fake news. It should be as simple to question it. So next time you are not sure about a message you’ve received, don’t forward it. Just 'backward' it.”
Ad Campaigns
Amazon Ads maps 2026 as AI and streaming rewrite ad playbooks
NATIONAL: Amazon Ads has laid out a sharply tech-led vision for the advertising industry in 2026, arguing that artificial intelligence, streaming TV and creator partnerships will combine to turn brand building into a more precise, performance-driven business.
At the heart of the shift, the company says, is the fusion of AI with Amazon’s vast trove of shopping, browsing and streaming signals, allowing advertisers to move beyond blunt reach metrics to campaigns designed around real customer behaviour.
“The future of advertising is not about reaching more people, but the right people with messages that resonate,” said Amazon Ads India head and vice president Girish Prabhu. “By combining AI with deep customer insights, we help brands move from broadcasting campaigns to having meaningful conversations wherever audiences spend their time.”
One of the biggest changes, according to Amazon Ads, will be the collapse of the wall between media planning and creative development. Retail media, powered by first-party data, is increasingly shaping everything from brand discovery to final purchase, pushing marketers to design campaigns around audience insight rather than internal instinct.
AI is also moving from a support tool to a creative engine. Agentic AI, which automates and accelerates production, is expected to make high-quality creative accessible even to small businesses, compressing weeks of work into hours and giving challengers the ability to compete with larger brands on speed and scale.
Behind the scenes, AI-driven analytics will take on a bigger role in campaign optimisation, identifying patterns, spotting opportunities and recommending actions that would previously have required teams of analysts.
Streaming TV is another big battleground. With India’s video streaming audience now above 600 million and connected TV users at 129.2 million in 2025, advertisers are set to treat streaming not just as a branding channel but as a performance engine, measured increasingly by sales, sign-ups and bookings rather than just reach.
Finally, Amazon Ads sees creators and contextual advertising reshaping how brands tell stories. Creators will act less like influencers and more like long-term partners, while scene-aware ads on streaming platforms will allow brands to insert hyper-relevant offers into the flow of what viewers are watching.
Taken together, Amazon Ads argues, these shifts mark a move towards advertising that is both more human and more measurable, where AI handles the complexity, and creativity does the persuading.








